Voice of experience ... George Negus will spearhead Ten's new current affairs coverage.

In TV, as in life, some habits are hard to break. Which is why the Ten Network is taking the long view with theshake-up of its schedule and the launch of entertainment channel Eleven.

Tomorrow, two of the network's flagship shows, Neighbours and The Simpsons, will migrate from Ten to Eleven, freeing the 6pm-7pm slot on the main channel for news and current affairs programs that will debut on January 24.

The manoeuvre may appear to be risky, fraught and counter-intuitive given the emblematic stature of those two shows for the youthful network.

But the head of programming, David Mott, insists the strategy is anything but. "It's going to take time and we're well aware of that," he says. "Don't underestimate our clear view that this strategy will not change. It's not a strategy we're moving back on."

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For years, Mott says, Ten has had a problem with its early evening line-up. While competitors Seven and Nine got the jump with audiences of 1million-and-counting for their nightly news and current affairs offerings, from the sidelines Ten watched the young audience for The Simpsons and Neighbours slip away.

One part of Ten's strategy involves bolstering and reshaping its news offerings on the main channel. The other is Eleven.

"The evidence now is that multichannels have been immensely successful," Mott says.

"We know that digital TV is up to 74-75per cent [household penetration] and growing.

"There's no question that there's a viable business going forward and a great opportunity to showcase more content."

What is also evident is that thereis more than one television in the majority of households and that many shows are being watchedsimultaneously.

He says it wasn't simply a matterof waiting to see Seven and Nine's entertainment multichannels before launching Ten's own new offering.

"We also wanted a strategic plan in place that gave us long-term comfort ... in setting up another channel," he says. "We didn't want a channel that would just carve off shows ... or fill timeslots with shows from our existing channel.

"We saw an opportunity to create a channel with unique content that wasn't seen on one channel and then moved to another channel and back again. You can do that for a while but we wanted to create a destination channel in its own right that lived, breathed and had a pulse of its own. One that wasn't being driven by our main channel."

After lengthy negotiations, the network set up a joint venture with CBS Studios International, whose 70,000-hour library – "The best of all US studios", according to Mott – will feed the new channel.

A key difference between other free multichannels that share and time-shift programs with the main channel is that certain shows, including Neighbours and TheSimpsons, will be exclusive to Eleven, Mott says.

"What plays on Eleven will stay on Eleven," he says.

The daytime schedule will target the 25- to 49-year-old female, grocery-buyer demographic with shows such as Cheers, Roseanne, The Love Boat, Seventh Heaven, Touched By an Angel, Happy Days, Sabrina, The Brady Bunch, Family Ties and Frasier.

Prime time will have a more youthful skew with new episodes of The Simpsons, Neighbours (still at its long-held 6.30pm berth), international shows such as Supernatural, Smallville, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, Nurse Jackie, The Office and a new talk show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson – "Scottish guy, a lot of fun", Mott says – at 10.30pm.

The midnight-to-dawn shift will be mainly encores, with classic comedies at breakfast. There will be "a bit of the pay TV sensibility, which is not uncommon in the multichannel environment," Mottsays.

As multichannels are not subject to quotas, the amount of Australian content broadcast remains a sensitive topic within theindustry.

Mott says the commitment to screen Neighbours on Eleven is "a significant move", pointing out it's the first Australia-produced drama to premiere on a free multichannel.

He says the network has "scoped out" production companies for possible content for Eleven and is piloting a show selected from a pitching competition held at the recent Screen Producers of Australia Association conference.

"The primary channel will always be the primary channel ... but over time there will be opportunities to create strong domestic brands for the multichannels," Mott says.

"The term 'multichannel' is going to be a thing of the past in years to come. When analogue switch-off occurs [in 2013], the multichannels will just be channels. Each channel will be asstrong as each other in terms ofaudience. It will just be about how each channel will be positioned.

"You'll notice we haven't called it Mate or Gem," Mott says, referring to Seven and Nine's other entertainment channels. "We've gone for the number rather than a name because we felt it would stand up in a free-to-air environment. You have Seven, Nine, Ten and, therefore, Eleven. We're saying this is not a sub-brand or a sub-channel, this has the potential to beas strong as any other channel."

Eleven launches tomorrow. TV listings from Tuesday will include scheduled programming for the new station.